“Be the powers! if he hasn’t fell out of bed, as me brother Tom used to remark to the ould gintleman, after he’d kicked me out of the same.  The fall ain’t far enough to hurt him seriously, but these laddies have a way of getting hurt, where a man couldn’t do it, if he tried.”

After calling and searching further, he struck a match and held it up.  A transient glimpse was gained of an area of several hundred feet, in which, it is needless to say, he saw nothing of his young friend.

“Be the powers! but he strayed away,” added Mickey, somewhat impatiently.  “He thought there was something that it would pay to chase, and he’s gone off, and, of course, will be lost.”

With a view to bringing him back, the Irishman called his name, whistled, and, after a time, fired his gun.  The echoes were not so loud as when Fred had fired, but the racket was sufficient to make him confident it would reach the ears of the boy, if he were not asleep or injured.

Mickey, as will be seen, formed the right opinion of the action of his young friend, and hoped that he would be able to work his way back to camp, as they called it, without any mishap or assistance from him.

“He thinks there’s another door that opens into the sunshine, and that isn’t locked, and, if it is, he can pick the kay.  He may work away till he becomes weary, and then he’ll be back here, and we’ll hare to contrive some other way, or it may be that good luck will lead him to the opening for which he sighs.  Heaven grant that the same may be the case.”

He waited, and watched, and hoped, as the hours passed by, until he began to believe that something serious had happened to him.  At intervals he repeated his signals, but on no occasion was there anything like a response.

It was an odd juxtaposition of events that, at the very moment he uttered some of the calls, the despairing kid was doing the same thing, and, although each strained his ears to the utmost, yet neither suspected the truth.

The hours and the time passed on, until happening to look up at the opening, Mickey saw the prepared blanket slowly descending, just as Fred looked upon it from the ridge.

“I’m obliged to yees,” he said, in an undertone, “but I don’t find myself in pressing naad of the same.  I have one here, but if ye insist on my taking that, I’ll not quarrel with yees.”

He resolved that when it came down within his reach he would cut the lasso, and take it, but before it reached the ground he had changed his mind.

He knew what the intention of the Apaches was, but he was not deceived for an instant.

“I’ll not do anything at all,” he muttered; “I’ll not interfere, where it’s so difficult to decide upon me duty, as the owld lady obsarved when the bear got her husband down.  I’ll let ’em think I’m aslaap, and see what they’ll do.”

And thus, as the reader already knows, the rolled-up blanket was lowered and raised again without molestation, almost grazing the upturned face of the Irishman as it did so.